Firewall#

The Goodenough College network is protected by a high-capacity firewall. The firewall
allows the use of web browsers, email and a lot of common Internet applications. Xbox Live
and Playstation Network also work through our firewall. The firewall does not block 99% of
outgoing applications. If you need to access sites that are not available via the College
network, we suggest accessing them from your University or getting a Dataplan for your
smartphone.
The College IT Department cannot guarantee that the specific application or website
you want to use will be available or fully-functional when accessed via the College
Network and are in no way responsible or liable for any loss, inconvenience or other
issues that this may cause.
The College IT department does not permit the use of certain applications including
Bittorrent and Popcorn Time and nor does it allow network applications such as packet-
analysers. Cryptocurrency mining on the College network is also forbidden.

Bittorrent#

Downloading any video, audio, software or other media for which you have not paid, by using
a Bittorrent client, Popcorn Time or any other software that uses the bittorrent protocol is
forbidden throughout Goodenough College. Any attempts to disguise the use of bittorrent
based applications will be treated extremely seriously and will usually result in your
expulsion from the College.

VPNs#

The use of anonymising VPNs is forbidden at Goodenough College. Using anonymising
VPNs causes the College’s external IP address to gain a “bad reputation” with sites such as
scamalytics.com. This information is used by a lot of online streaming services including the
BBC, ITV and Amazon Prime Video. These companies then block streaming video for everybody at the College. (This happened multiple times during the Euro 2020 football championships.) Preventing the use of anonymising VPNs is the only solution to this problem.

An exception can be made for Connection VPNs that are used to connect securely to computers at your University as these are not designed to hide your identity and do not cause any damage to the IP Address’s reputation.

Please contact ithelpdesk@goodenough.ac.uk if you need to do this.

TV and Movie Streaming#

The College has a very large capacity Internet connection but it’s not infinite. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime use up huge amounts of the available bandwidth and if the entire population of Goodenough College were to try and simultaneously stream HD movies, the Internet connection would slow down to a crawl.

The solution is to use some common sense and courtesy towards your fellow Members.

Please don’t stream movies or TV for more than four hours a day and try not to stream during the busiest time in the evening if you can avoid it. Please do not stream in a higher resolution than necessary. You do not need to stream in 4K if you are watching on your phone!